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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28191813">scary ghost stories and tales of the glories</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde'>Roccolinde</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Game of Thrones (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>5+1 Times, F/M, Ghosts, there's character death baked into the premise but it's not the end</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 22:15:28</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,562</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28191813</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roccolinde/pseuds/Roccolinde</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Jaime or Brienne were a ghost, and one time they weren't.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Jaime Lannister &amp; Brienne of Tarth, Jaime Lannister/Brienne of Tarth</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>34</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>91</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>JB Festive Festival Exchange Stocking Stuffers 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>scary ghost stories and tales of the glories</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChaoticDemon/gifts">ChaoticDemon</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>So, I was browsing the JB Festive Festival Exchange prompts for some stocking stuffer ideas when the prompt 'ghosts' leapt up and shook me, because I'd had an idea for months that I'd never finished and I figured why not?</p>
<p>There's some major character death in this, given the entire premise is five times they are ghosts, but I don't think most of them are unhappy and the ending is both soft and hopeful. </p>
<p>Title comes from <i>It's the Most Wonderful Tme of the Year</i>, because I had no title but did have an earworm.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <strong>[1]</strong>
</p>
<p>Brienne is eleven when the new king is to be crowned, and when Septa Roelle catches a terrible chill and takes to her bed for several long weeks her father sees it as a reason to bring Brienne along to the coronation. He believes it a treat--all girls must wish to take their place at court, and so he brings her best gowns and orders her onto the ship.</p>
<p>King's Landing is boring, and her hand itches for a sword until she slips from the Maiden's Vault early one morning and heads towards the armory. The door is locked and she sighs, wondering if a stick from the godswood would suffice instead when she hears a tinkling laugh, and when she turns towards it she sees a tourney sword on the ground and no one around.</p>
<p>It happens several times after that--swords where there had been none, laughter in empty halls. When she carelessly falls asleep at a table with the candle still burning, her entire body is shaken awake just in time to keep the fire from catching her sleeve.</p>
<p>The day she meets the new King and his young and beautiful bride, she cannot keep from staring at the knight that stands behind the throne; he is a perfect mirror of Queen Cersei, cold and golden, until he sees her gaze and winks.</p>
<p>The day she is sworn to the Kingsguard, seventeen years old and proud as any lion might have been, Ser Jaime Lannister watches on before turning into dust motes in the light of the setting sun.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>[2]</strong>
</p>
<p>She dies at the Red Wedding. Everyone does. Her last thought is of the Stark girls, alone and frightened in King's Landing. Thinks how Catelyn had intended to send Brienne south with the Kingslayer to negotiate a trade and been thwarted. She thinks, and regrets, and fights until her last breath.</p>
<p>She wakes next to the newly freed man.</p>
<p>"Gods," he groans, "Your ugly face is enough to make a man wish he was back chains."</p>
<p>She strikes at him, but it is nothing more than smoke. She must find another way.</p>
<p>(Moons later, when Sansa Stark is safe with her brother at the Wall, he is asked to go north of the wall. They need the Queen Regent’s aid, and hope somehow her brother--disgraced though he might be--will persuade her. And so he goes, but he will not return. Brienne can only hold him, both of them here on this line between life and death. <em>Gods</em>, he says, <em>Were your eyes that blue in life?</em> And she weeps.)</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>[3]</strong>
</p>
<p>He dies in his sleep. That is the story that reaches the group returning to Winterfell after the Dragonpit Summit.</p>
<p>That night, in her tent, she dreams of him. He stands in profile and he is exactly as she’d seen him only days before, beautiful and hard and distant as he opens his mouth to speak. All that comes forth is a gurgle, and when she calls his name he turns to her. His head has been crushed on one side, and his eyes plead with her as his mouth moves silently. She rises from her bed, strokes his cheek. It is a dream, she knows that even as she dreams it, and so she allows herself this tenderness, this soft farewell of a man she knew both so well and not at all.</p>
<p>“Cersei,” he finally manages, a harsh whisper like wind through the autumn leaves. “Betrayal.”</p>
<p>“We won’t betray her,” she promises.</p>
<p>“No!” She feels more than hears it, like a strike to the chest that steals her breath. “Cersei… betrayed…” He grasps at the hilt of Oathkeeper, laid on the table beside them, attempts to pull it from its scabbard. “Oathbreaker.”</p>
<p>She closes her eyes, swallows hard. She’d tried not to understand the expression on Lord Tyrion’s face when news of his brother’s death had reached the camp, but she had. All too well.</p>
<p>“Thank you, Ser Jaime,” she manages to say. “You have kept your word.”</p>
<p>When she opens her eyes once more he is gone, and she reminds herself he has never truly been there. It had been a dream, a fantasy brought upon by grief.</p>
<p>It is only when dawn breaks and light fills her tent that she sees her sword is half unsheathed on the table, and the bloody handprint on its hilt.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>[4]</strong>
</p>
<p>Tarth is full of secrets. Secret valleys, secret ancestors, secret magic. Secret lovers.</p>
<p>There is a valley an hour’s ride from Evenfall Hall. She is waiting for him there, her hair the colour of moonlight, her body as certain and steady as the pine trees that scent the autumn air. When he sees her like this, he cannot fathom that she ever left the island. She even tastes of the sea he can hear in the distance, when she kisses him. Sings as sweetly as the wind that blows through his hair.</p>
<p>When the dawn sun begins to light the sky, he leaves as he came. Selwyn is waiting for him by the gates of Evenfall as he has since the night he’d told Jaime of the valley, of the magic found within it on the longest night of the year, looking frailer than ever. He will have to declare an heir soon, Jaime knows, but neither man can…</p>
<p>“Thank you,” he says, choked. <em>Next year</em>, he thinks. Next year he will send Selwyn in his place.</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>[5]</strong>
</p>
<p>When King Renly offers Brienne the title of Lord Commander, she does not expect the honour to come with a ghost in her quarters. It’s ridiculous, she knows, and she does not voice her suspicions to anyone lest they think her mad, but it’s impossible to deny. Objects move, drawers slam, her armour is off its stand one morning, and the white cloak is always, always soiled after she cleans it. But she does not see the perpetrator, no matter how carefully she looks, and so she learns to accept it.</p>
<p>And then one day there is a man in her private solar, his legs dangling over the leg of a chair and an indolent expression on his face.</p>
<p>“He wants you to fail, you know. Your precious King Renly.”</p>
<p>“Who are you?”</p>
<p>“You know who I am,” the man shrugs, “and worse, you know I’m right. It’s quite cunning, by his standards, so I suspect it is his wife behind it all. Olenna Tyrell would not like her granddaughter and youngest grandson lost to the same king, too many eggs in one basket. But if <em>you</em> are given the task and fail, he can say there is none other and she will find it impossible to resist.”</p>
<p>She’s not naive. She has seen enough in the time it has taken her king to take the throne to have her own suspicions. Still, she firms her jaw and stares down the Kingslayer.</p>
<p>“And what would you have me do about it?” she asks, challenging.</p>
<p>“I might be dead,” he says with a sharp, smug tilt to his lips as he rises from the chair, “but that Tyrell pup will <em>not</em> take my title.”</p>
<p> </p>
<hr/>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <strong>[+1]</strong>
</p>
<p>They have shared quarters for nearly a moon, a constant rotation of sleeping and scouting and shoring up Winterfell’s reinforcements that means that not one night in ten have they been there at the same time. When they are, he offers to sleep on the floor--that she had offered him a place to sleep at all is more than he could have expected--but she points out with infuriating stubbornness that no rumours will be set about that did not already exist.</p>
<p>The night the undead come upon Winterfell, he watches her fall in battle and cannot stop to grieve, can only shout and command and try to keep those still living on their feet. When the fighting is done it is all he can do to drag himself back to the small room and collapse upon the bed, still in his half his armour.</p>
<p>There is no reason to who lives and who dies, on nights like this, but still he tries to make sense of it. Tries to imagine a world where Brienne ceases to exist, stubborn and glorious and righteous in her anger, and cannot. He must sleep eventually, because he hears the door creak and when he opens his eyes it is to find her standing at the foot of the bed, pale and confused, a spectre sent to haunt him for his failures.</p>
<p>“Come to reprimand me?” he asks; he means to sound scathing, but the words choke him.</p>
<p>She blinks slowly and sways on her feet, and it is not until she is in his arms, solid and real, that he realises he is moving, that she is alive and here, that he has not… He strips her as best he can with one hand, down to her smallclothes, holds her steady with his arm as he checks her for injuries and finds none. He feels her exhales against his skin as he helps her to the bed, a softly gusted <em>Jaime</em>, and lies down beside her, presses his forehead against hers, and says nothing at all.</p>
<p>They might yet die in battle, but it will not be tonight. And for tonight, that is enough.</p>
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